David Miliband: It is for precisely that reason that I went to Cairo two months ago, and it is also why I spoke to the Egyptian Foreign Minister the Friday before last. Egypt has an absolutely pivotal role to play, both in practical terms in respect of the smuggling to which the hon. Gentleman rightly referred—and which is a long-term and not a short-term problem—and in respect of the crossings. Twenty two nations supported the Arab peace initiative, which remains a very important contribution to the peace process. It shows that moderate Arab opinion is rallying around reconciliation with Israel, and reflects the Arab world's determination to take its responsibilities very seriously. That is to be wholly welcomed, and I know that Egypt's Foreign Minister is determined to continue to play what is an important role for Egypt and other leading nations.

Kim Howells: The United Kingdom enjoys a strong partnership with India based on the shared values of democracy, fundamental freedoms, pluralism, rule of law and respect for human rights. The Prime Minister's recent visit to New Delhi strengthened that partnership by ensuring that progress was made on a range of bilateral and wider international issues. Both sides will use the outcome of the visit to deepen further the relationship.

John Redwood: When issuing instructions on the policing for the progress of the Olympic torch in Britain, will the Government take the view that the police should allow placards to appear in any picture of the torch passing—the protestors' view—or will they take the Chinese view that the event should be policed in such a way that no protest placards and posters will be on display?

David Miliband: I fully agree with the right hon. Gentleman on the need for a twin-track approach to Iran. It is the Government's policy that we must ensure that the sanctions are clear and strong, and that incentives for Iranian co-operation are clear. I am sorry that he has dismissed what the European Union is doing. I think that he agrees that Europe has out-performed the requirements of the existing UN sanctions regime. The EU has gone beyond the requirements of the UN position on nuclear and missile technology, dual use items, travel restrictions, the assets freeze and a study ban. It is important—I would have thought that we could agree on this—that we continue to make it clear, by both reiterating the June 2006 offer and pointing to the flexibility that we showed in the May 2007 offer of a suspension for a suspension, that there is a real chance for Iran to rejoin the community of nations on the issue.

Jack Straw: Not all of them were from the hon. Member for Romford, but as the House knows, I was extremely happy to join him in his campaign, and have made my own contribution to it.
	In line with the majority of responses, we have decided that the interim change made to the guidance to allow Government Departments to fly the Union flag from their buildings whenever they wish should now become permanent. There are no plans to change the arrangements for flag flying in Northern Ireland.
	Good law is imperative for accessible and modern constitutional arrangements. For 40 years the Law Commission has played a vital role in that respect, but I intend to strengthen its role by placing a statutory duty on the Lord Chancellor to report annually to Parliament on the Government's intentions regarding outstanding Law Commission recommendations, and providing a statutory backing for the arrangements underpinning the way in which Government should work with the Law Commission. Those changes sit alongside those announced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House last week, which will strengthen the scrutiny of laws after they have been enacted by Parliament.
	Discussions in the cross-party working group on reform of the House of Lords are proceeding well, and we are on track to publish a White Paper before the summer recess. In the coming months we will publish a Green Paper on a British Bill of Rights and responsibilities, and on the values that should bind us together as citizens.
	As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland announced today, Professor Sir Kenneth Calman has agreed to serve as chair of a commission to review the Scotland Act 1998. Such a commission was proposed in, and approved by a majority of, the Scottish Parliament. The Government welcome their support for the aim of strengthening devolution and securing Scotland's place in the Union, and we are giving our full backing to the cross-border, cross-party review.
	The proposals in the White Paper and the draft Bill go to the heart of how power should be exercised in a modern democracy. They are not a final blueprint, but part of a much wider Government programme to secure a new constitutional settlement. They will strengthen the role of Parliament in our democracy, for it is Parliament, the seat of our democracy, that is central to this programme of constitutional renewal.
	I commend my statement to the House.

Nick Herbert: I thank the Secretary of State for Justice for early sight of his statement. There is much in the Government's proposals with which we can agree. We welcome measures to strengthen the autonomy of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and to place on a statutory basis the rules governing ratification of treaties. We also welcome—seven years after the Government's commitment to it—legislation to put the civil service on a statutory footing, as recommended by our democracy taskforce, but why will the Government not go further and place a statutory cap on the number of special advisers? And, although pre-appointment scrutiny hearings by Select Committees would be welcome, should not Parliament be strengthened further, not least by the ability to set its own timetable, so that we can scrutinise legislation properly?
	The decision to commit troops to conflict is one of the most important that a nation can take. Last May we tabled a motion to require parliamentary approval for substantial deployments of troops into conflict. I welcome the fact that the Government now accept that principle, but when prior approval cannot be sought, why should there not be a mechanism for securing retrospective approval?
	In a democracy, citizens should have the right to make their views known peacefully to those who govern them. The Government's laws restricting the right to protest around Parliament caused widespread disquiet, and we welcome plans to repeal them, but can the Government say more about how they plan to ensure that while peaceful protest is protected, demonstrations that disrupt the operation of Parliament are not?
	We welcome the commitment to introduce greater clarity into the relationship between the Attorney-General and the prosecution directors, but it is also proposed to end the requirement for the Attorney-General to give consent for a wide range of prosecutions. How is accountability to be preserved if that role is removed from the Attorney-General?
	An independent judiciary is at the core of our liberty. Reducing the influence of the Executive on judicial appointments is welcome, but does the Justice Secretary agree that the principle of judicial independence is harmed when Ministers seek to influence the sentencing decisions of judges and magistrates—for instance, by urging them not to imprison offenders because the jails are full?
	In a newspaper article today, the Prime Minister said that the Justice Secretary would today be "consulting throughout the country" on a statement of values and the British Bill of rights and duties—but in his statement the Justice Secretary said that a Green Paper will be published over the coming months. Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify when this process will begin? Will it do so today, as the Prime Minister suggested, or over the coming months?
	Will the Justice Secretary also tell us whether, as was reported yesterday, he plans to consult on alternative voting systems for the Commons, and compulsory voting, and if so, when? Does the Justice Secretary agree that the electoral system should never be reformed for partisan political purposes?
	The Prime Minister also wrote today in support of the Union, but is it not the case that unbalanced devolution has unleashed the forces of nationalism? So far, the Government's answer has been to fly flags on Government buildings. Will the Calman commission, announced today, address the real issue of concern, which is the still unanswered West Lothian question?
	When the Prime Minister announced his ideas for constitutional reform last July, he spoke about rebuilding trust in democracy. Since then, he has refused the referendum that he promised on the EU constitution. How can trust be rebuilt if such important promises are broken? Is it not the case that the relationship between the people and politicians is seriously damaged, and that it will require more to repair our broken politics than the measures announced today?
	When more and more decisions are being taken centrally—not here in Parliament, but in Whitehall—is not the real need to return power to individuals and communities, so that people have a genuine say over decisions that affect them? Why are we not giving citizens the power to initiate debates in this House and have new laws tabled? Is there not a pressing need both for measures to ensure transparency in how we as politicians account for ourselves and our spending to the electorate, and to put an end to the culture of spin, which has so gravely undermined trust in politics? If the Government continue to shy away from real change, is not the danger that measures such as those announced today will be seen as worthy, but inadequate?

Jack Straw: No, I was never arrested.
	The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) raises an important point on consent to prosecutions, but we cannot have it both ways. It is proposed that the requirement for the Attorney-General to give consent to a series of prosecutions should, in general, be removed. If we want to make prosecutors more independent, we must bite that bullet. Ultimately, the choice will be one for this House and the other place, but we cannot have things both ways. The Attorney-General will still be accountable for the broad operation and management of the prosecution service, and I think that that is appropriate.
	I agree with the hon. Gentleman about voting systems. I think he was directly quoting me, because although I claim no monopoly on the view, I have always said that we should never change the voting system for partisan purposes. That has been the practice in one or two European countries, usually with disastrous consequences for the parties doing the proposing. We published a review of voting systems. Personally, I am profoundly committed to single Member constituencies. I have always thought that there is much to be said on both sides, whether we are talking about first past the post or the alternative vote, particularly as we now have multiple candidates, as opposed to the situation in the 1950s when there were normally simply two candidates.
	Let me make it clear that we are against making it a criminal offence not to vote. We need to address the issue of how we can raise turnout at elections, and there is a case for there to be a general non-enforceable duty for people to vote, as part of their understanding of their responsibilities as citizens; we are consulting on that. On citizens' powers, I merely say to the hon. Gentleman that when I was Leader of the House we put forward radical proposals to the Procedure Committee for improving how the petitions system works so that matters could be triggered in this House. It was a matter for the Procedure Committee that they came to a different view from some of us on the Modernisation Committee.

David Howarth: I, too, thank the Secretary of State for advanced notice of his statement. Will he acknowledge that although some aspects of it are welcome—for example, the abolition of the absurd restrictions on demonstrating around Parliament—much of what he has said will be seen as tentative first steps and half measures?
	It is right that the Attorney-General should not give direction on individual prosecutions, and should give only general policy guidance that is open and on the record. However, does the Secretary of State not accept that as long as the Attorney-General retains a broad, unaccountable power to stop prosecutions on grounds of national security, the public will not be reassured about, for example, the shameful events surrounding the dropping of the BAE Systems case? Why will the Attorney-General still have a power to stop prosecutions related to terrorism? Is it not important to fight terrorism on the basis of fighting crime, in a context that has nothing to do with political decisions?
	The proposals on not releasing the Attorney-General's legal opinions are especially poignant, given that later today we will debate the Iraq war. There is a strong case for confidentiality while policy is being formulated, but when the Government rely on that legal advice in a parliamentary debate, Parliament should see the real thing. It is not enough for the Government merely to promise not to mislead Parliament.
	On treaty ratification, the Government are again taking a step in the right direction, but given their tight grip on the business of the House, does not the proposal mean that there will be a vote in the House only if the Government want one?
	On the proposal to put the civil service on a statutory footing, there will be quiet rejoicing in many discreet quarters, but—again, on the day of a debate on Iraq—why are the Government to make an exception so that MI5 and MI6 officers will not be bound by duties of impartiality and objectivity? Surely one central lesson of Iraq is that never again should Government policy dictate intelligence.
	On the limiting of the Prime Minister's power to call early elections, which was given short shrift in the statement, I invite the Government to clear up the whole mess by supporting my Fixed Term Parliaments Bill.
	Is not the main problem with the statement that it is nibbling at the edges of constitutional reform? Our political system is broken and people are losing faith in politics. That means that if we do nothing about it, they will lose faith in democracy itself. This House is at the heart of the problem, being elected in so unrepresentative a way that all Governments start out as unpopular, and usually get worse. As in 1832, and many times since, reform must start with the way in which this House is elected.

Jack Straw: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's criticisms of the changes. These are major and significant changes, and it has fallen to this reforming Government to introduce them, when no changes of any constitutional significance were introduced by the previous Administration.
	In response to the hon. Gentleman's points about the Attorney-General, it is our judgment that it is appropriate and proper, and in the national interest, that there should be a power for someone to make difficult and sometimes unwelcome decisions to protect national security. It is important that whoever is in that position should be accountable. Far from the Attorney-General being unaccountable, our proposals mean that they would be more accountable than they are today, and there would be greater clarity about their distinctive role.
	On the issue of the Attorney-General's legal advice, my belief is that, as with any legal advice in any circumstances, it has to be given on the basis of legal professional privilege, but there is certainly a case—as referred to in the draft resolution on pages 53 to 56 of the proposals—for the Prime Minister of the day to be required to provide information on the legal issues relating to any proposal for armed conflict, and that is what we propose.
	On treaty ratification, there will have to be a vote. We are not proposing to use the negative resolution procedure. Either the treaty will be approved on the nod or there will be a vote. If there is a vote against a treaty ratification the treaty cannot be ratified by the Government, and that is a major shift of power to this House.
	I wondered how long it would take the Liberals to get on to proportional representation as a solution to all our problems. They have been banging on about that ever since the 1923 election, when they ceased to be the second party and became the third party. Before they became the third party, they were in favour of first past the post and single-member constituencies. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman examine other countries that have proportional representation, because they have more problems with the operation of their democracy than we do.

Jack Straw: I understand that there are strong feelings about that. Those encampments are unsightly, but they also represent people exercising a right to demonstrate. The changes in the law have not been conspicuously successful— [Interruption.] It is no good pointing at me; I am not the police. The changes in the law have not been conspicuously successful in dealing with the problem, and they have appeared to be pretty heavy handed as well, so better arrangements are needed. Let us see what the House has to say about it.

Jack Straw: We have proposed to the Modernisation Committee that where the Prime Minister proposes the dissolution of Parliament—that is the system that we have, and it is the system in most parliamentary democracies, though not all—he would have to receive a vote on that by this House before it could to ahead.

David Miliband: As I shall show in the course of my remarks, the Ministry of Defence has published two studies of the lessons to be learned and have conducted numerous internal studies, too, which are informing the work that is going on.

Andrew Tyrie: The whole of the Foreign Secretary's argument seems to rest on what will be perceived outside this Chamber as the absurd premise that a group of 4,000 people with an over-watch role will somehow have their morale undermined if we commence an investigation to clear up the huge number of concerns that remain about the war. Is that really what his argument rests on? If not, will he finally get round to telling us what his argument is?

David Miliband: No, I am just going to make this point, then I shall let hon. Members come in.
	British forces still have an important role to play in monitoring, mentoring and training the Iraqi security force in southern Iraq. Our forces support the Iraqi security force in active operations such as countering smuggling on the Shatt al-Arab waterway and at the Iranian border, including by supporting, training and developing the Iraqi department of border enforcement.
	When necessary, and at the request of Iraqi authorities, we provide Iraqi-led operations with advanced capabilities that the Iraqi security forces do not possess. That was what we did in January when the ISF were faced with a series of pre-planned attacks in both Basra and An Nasiriyah by a fundamentalist sect during the Ashura festival.

Edward Davey: I am afraid that the Foreign Secretary has just holed himself below the water line. He has told the House there have been four inquiries, and that used to be the Government's argument for not holding an official inquiry. Will he tell the House how the Government were able to hold the four inquiries about which they now boast without harming operations in Iraq?

Menzies Campbell: I have listened carefully to the Foreign Secretary's speech. Does he understand that the impression that he is giving is less a concern about the effectiveness of British operations in Basra and much more a determination to try to protect the Government from embarrassment in relation to the decision to go to war.

Edward Davey: One can only go on what the military spokesmen are saying.
	Even if the limited military operations mentioned by the Foreign Secretary are ongoing, I still do not see how they would be an obstacle to an inquiry. He went on to talk about the attention and focus of our armed forces and diplomats. However, if that is the argument, our engagement in any military operation anywhere in the world—Afghanistan or elsewhere—would hinder an inquiry. The argument is palpably absurd.
	I was grateful for the history lesson given by the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson); it really holed the Foreign Secretary beneath the water line, and he failed to answer the hon. Gentleman's point. He was also wrong in his refutation of the precedent of the Dardanelles commission of 1916-17, cited by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). That was sitting during the first world war. The actions in Gallipoli may have finished, but let us face it, our armed forces were hugely involved in northern France. The idea that because the action had happened in Gallipoli, those involved were freed up so that the inquiry could take place is absurd.

Edward Davey: I certainly think that all the Opposition parties in this House should work together on that and work with those Labour Back Benchers who are prepared to be open-minded about the issue, as many of them were. Five years ago, more than 100 of them bravely went against very hard whipping from their Front Benchers to support our arguments against the war, so I am sure that that could be brought about by people of good faith.
	Given the scale of the disaster in Iraq, it is perhaps understandable that the Government are reluctant to open their files. There was a chance during the change of Prime Minister to seize the moment, draw a line and have the inquiry, but I am afraid that once again the new Prime Minister ducked that opportunity—as in so many things, he is blowing his chances.
	We owe an inquiry to the people who have died—the 175 British servicemen and women and the 4,000 American troops, and the countless number of Iraqi civilians. Whether that figure is the latest UN estimate of 0.25 million or the higher figures of  The Lancet and other surveys, those deaths demand an inquiry, as do the injured, the tortured, the refugees, the internally displaced, the kidnapped, the people whose lives have been ruined—the millions of people affected by the decision to go to war. When we begin to count the cost of the war in the lives lost and in the damage to security, stability and the rule of international law, it is, frankly, frightening. That is before we get to the cost to the taxpayer, the cost to our friends and allies in the region—countries such as Turkey, Israel and Jordan—and the cost of making less friendly countries in the region much stronger, such as Iran and Syria, which have been strengthened by the failures in Iraq. Then we should think of the cost to the United Nations and its credibility. How can anyone say that there is no need for an urgent inquiry?

Ann Clwyd: I think that I have been quite consistent during the time that I have spoken about Iraq in this Chamber. I argued for one thing—for the removal of a regime that persecuted its own people and was responsible for 5,000 deaths in Halabja, for the deaths of tens of thousands of Kurds throughout Kurdistan, and for the deaths of tens of thousands of Shi'a in the south. It was for humanitarian reasons that I always argued for the removal of the regime, and I did so in 2003 when I spoke in favour of the war. I did that because I had failed—and I would suggest that we had all failed—in looking at the alternatives to war in the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime. There were alternatives. There was an alternative that I spoke about here for at least seven years; in fact, I continually bored myself by talking about it so often. I was very pleased that 201 people in this Chamber—my colleagues in all parts of the House—voted at that time to indict the regime and to remove it by international law. That would have been possible.
	I support the inquiry, but I would like it to include the question of why nobody took the indictment of the regime seriously at that time. I chaired an organisation called Indict, which had collected evidence of Iraqi war crimes over a period of seven years. We had three researchers who went to 15 countries all over the world and collected that evidence in case anybody forgot about it. Some of the evidence went back further back than seven years; it went back for more 30 years, because it was for 30 years that that regime persecuted its own people. We employed researchers and lawyers to take testimony from Iraqis all over the world. We gathered evidence, carried out interviews and prepared legal briefs detailing the monstrosity of the Saddam regime as told to us by individual Iraqis. We took many more testimonies than we were able to use; some of them, unfortunately, would not have stood up in a court of law. The crimes committed by the regime were truly appalling.

Alan Simpson: My hon. Friend makes an important point, but does she regret—as those who shared her concern but still voted against war do—that when the trial of Saddam Hussein finally took place, it was framed in such narrow terms that none of the charges about which she had collected evidence were allowed to be addressed? The British and American Governments felt that evidence of our own complicit involvement in supporting and perpetrating those atrocities would be unearthed .

Mike Gapes: My right hon. Friend knows, because she has been involved in the campaign longer than me, that we have just marked the 20th anniversary of the terrible Anfal atrocities that Saddam carried out, but where has that appeared on the BBC? Where has the "Today" programme been? When did John Humphrys talk about that yesterday? There has not been a word.

Michael Howard: That is exactly what the Scott inquiry examined at length. It was right to hold an inquiry into those matters. The previous Government set it up and it duly reported.
	Our debates about the need for an inquiry into events surrounding the invasion of Iraq before and after it took place were clothed in a language that had an arcane theology of its own. That was when the former Prime Minister was still in office and before the Defence Secretary's announcement in 2006, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) referred. The Government position then was that no full inquiry was needed because of those that had already taken place.
	Those debates were punctuated with obscure arguments about the precise terms of reference of the previous inquiries and the extent to which they had been implemented. The Government's position at that time and in the context of those arguments was not only inconsistent with that that the Foreign Secretary advanced today but directly contradicted it. Their argument then was, "We've had all these wide-ranging and comprehensive inquiries—there's nothing left to inquire into." Fortunately they realised—I suppose that they deserve some credit for it—that that position was untenable. They therefore changed it and accepted that the case for an inquiry was unanswerable. So far, so good.
	Unfortunately, as we have heard today, the Government's position is, "Yes, we'll have an inquiry, but not yet. We won't tell you when or precisely what circumstances must be satisfied. It'll happen sometime, but not yet." That exposed a vulnerability in the Government's line, which, as we have witnessed this evening, was obvious, clear and wholly indefensible. There is no good reason for not holding an inquiry now, and everyone, including the Government, knows it.
	It is interesting that when the Prime Minister responded to the case for holding an inquiry that the Fabian Society put forward, he limited himself to just one reason. He said that it is
	"vital that the government does not divert attention from supporting Iraq's development as a secure and stable country."
	That prompts the question, which has already arisen in this debate: whose attention would be diverted from that task? It would not be our troops on the ground in Iraq whose attention would be diverted. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to see how they would be involved in such an inquiry, so there is no cause for concern there. The Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary, who we hope are spearheading the United Kingdom's support for Iraq's development as a stable and secure country—they have the political responsibility for that task—were not involved in the events surrounding the invasion, so they are not likely to have their attention diverted from that important task, either.
	The House is entitled to know whom the Prime Minister had in mind when he uttered those words. We are entitled to an answer. Who are the people whose attention would be diverted from that task? I hope that the Minister, who has the unenviable task of replying to this debate, will respond to that question. If the Prime Minister says that the reason for not holding an inquiry now is that we must not divert people's attention from that task, we want to know whose attention would be diverted.

Tobias Ellwood: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that many military personnel would welcome an inquiry now? Many in the military feel that they were left with a huge burden, in moving into Iraq and creating a level of peace without back-up from other Departments—namely the Department for International Development, which did not undertake the reconstruction and redevelopment that was so needed. However, it is the military that receives the brunt of the complaints about what has gone wrong.

Mike Gapes: Since 2003 there have been four inquiries into the events leading up the war in Iraq, as has been stated. There has been the Butler inquiry, the Hutton inquiry, the Intelligence and Security Committee inquiry and the Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry, which was agreed in June 2003.
	However, there is a need for ongoing investigation and inquiry, and for lessons to be learned. I gave evidence to Channel 4's Iraq Commission inquiry a few months ago. That was a valuable exercise and the report of the commission, which is chaired by Lord Ashdown, was a valuable piece of work. However, that is not what today's debate is about. In today's motion, hon. Members are pressing for
	"an independent committee of privy councillors"
	to conduct an inquiry. We might ask whether one can find such a thing as a genuinely independent Privy Councillor, but that is a debate for another time.
	Reference has been made to the US Baker-Hamilton inquiry. That inquiry was composed not only of current members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate. It was a body that brought in academic experts and former diplomats, as well as Lee Hamilton and James Baker as its bipartisan chairs.
	My first criticism of the motion before us relates to my belief that we need to widen the focus of any such inquiry, when the time comes. We also need to take account of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) referred to as the long history of events in Iraq that led to the decisions made in this House in March 2003. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who is not in his place at the moment, said that an inquiry should concentrate on 2002, 2003 and 2004. I would ask why, and I would do so for two reasons. Reference was made earlier to the Scott inquiry. That inquiry did not deal with the terrible crimes of Saddam against the Kurdish people in Halabja. Instead, it took a narrow focus on the supergun, Matrix Churchill and the way in which public immunity certificates were used in a legal process to stop the truth coming out under the previous Conservative Government. The late Robin Cook did a fantastic job of demolishing the Conservative party and its role in that debate, after the Scott report was published. Any inquiry that takes account of the recent past would also have to take account of the previous history.
	Reference was also made to the arms sales policies of the 1980s, when some of the Conservative Members who are here today were members of the Government who were selling arms to Saddam. We can look back to 1980, when Margaret Thatcher and the right hon. and learned Members for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) were all part of that British Conservative Government. They made the decision to support the Ba'athist fascist regime in Iraq, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, as well as supporting Osama bin Laden and other disreputable people whom we now regard as beyond the pale. At that time, however, for reasons of state, certain decisions were made. We need to look at the whole context.
	If there is to be an inquiry, let it not be partisan. Let us have an inquiry into the UK's relations with Iraq over the past 30 years. Let us really dig up the stones and look at the way in which those on the Conservative Benches who are now taking a holier-than-thou position on these matters were conspiring to support that Ba'athist regime while my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and I were campaigning against the arming of Saddam. Let us not forget that as we discuss what kind of inquiry we should have.

Peter Tapsell: I am all in favour of the inquiry, because I should like to see Mr. Blair cross-examined on these matters. I have no doubt that after the American presidential election, when the new President takes over next January, the Democrats—if they win—will investigate all these matters, so we might as well do it ourselves.
	I shall return to the question of Mr. Blair in a moment, but I think we must not lose sight of the magnitude of the disaster, and of the reason given to us for going to war. One would hardly believe that some of the speakers whom I have heard tonight were present when they heard Mr. Blair's brilliant eve-of-war speech to the House of Commons, in which he made perfectly clear that regime change was not the reason why we had to go to war. The reason, we were told, was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be mobilised within 45 minutes and which might not only put our troops in Cyprus at risk, but pose a threat to Britain itself. That was the basis on which we were told that we must vote for going to war, and the basis on which the country was led into the war.
	A great deal of evidence about the intelligence on which Mr. Blair based that speech has been made public, and appeared in the various reports. It is perfectly clear that the evidence did not justify the terms in which he explained the position to the House. Even Lord Butler's report, in mandarin English, makes that clear.
	This sort of thing is not unusual in history. We need only think back to the meeting between Napoleon III and Cavour at Plombières, or Bismarck's handling of the Ems telegram—to take two of the most famous schoolboy examples, about which we were all taught at the age of 11 or 12 in the days when history was still taught in this country—to know that political leaders do periodically decide to involve themselves in skulduggery in order to achieve what they think are foreign policy aims which it is desirable to pursue.
	I am not just being wise after the event, as it is so easy to be, because I never believed in any of this at the time. I had known Iraq, although not as well as the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). I had been there first when I was 19, and a number of times since then. For many years I had been an adviser to the Central Bank of Iraq on the management of its bond portfolios, and I had met every leader of Iraq from General Nuri to Saddam Hussein. I therefore had some knowledge of these matters. I know many members of the foreign service who have served in the middle east, and none of them believed the story. Moreover, they were not consulted. That was the extraordinary thing: in the run-up to all this, none of the key people in the Foreign Office with great expertise on the Arab world were consulted.
	Four months before the war, during a debate on resolution 1441, I said—if I may egotistically quote from  Hansard—
	"It seems to me that we shall get into difficulties if the inspectors are given a free and unfettered right to search for weapons of mass destruction, if that continues without interference, and if they are unable to find any such weapons. Surely we could not, at that point, say that, because we believe that those weapons were there last September, a nil return would justify an attack on Iraq. That would be difficult to explain to the British people."—[ Official Report, 25 November 2002; Vol. 395, c. 70.]
	I said that in a speech on 25 November 2002—or, rather, not a speech: just an intervention.
	It was perfectly clear to me then that they were not going to allow Hans Blix and his inspectors to do their job properly. Indeed, they started a whispering campaign to discredit Hans Blix and the inspectors because they were frightened of his integrity. They started saying "The man is unreliable, and all these people are absolutely inefficient."
	A month after the attack, at Prime Minister's Question Time, I put the following question to Mr. Blair:
	"If it eventually transpires that at the time of our invasion Iraq no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction capable of threatening this country, and that the Prime Minister led this country into war on the basis of a false assumption, will he resign?"
	Mr. Blair gave a long reply, from which I shall select two key sentences. Members can look it up if they wish. In his reply, the Prime Minister of the day said:
	"I am absolutely convinced and confident about the case on weapons of mass destruction... we will produce the analysis and the results of that investigation in due course. I think that when we do so, the hon. Gentleman and others will be eating some of their words."—[ Official Report, 30 April 2003; Vol. 404, c. 296.]
	Well, I never had to eat my words—and nor, I may say, has Mr. Blair, because he has never apologised for the whole thing.
	The situation that existed then has led to a complete collapse of the balance of power in the middle east, which depended on the triangular animosities of the secular dictatorship of Iraq, the Sunni monarchical Government of Saudi Arabia and the theocratic Shi'a Government of Iran. Those three mutually conflicting animosities between the three leading countries in the middle east kept the peace. British foreign policy at its best has always supported the balance of power for that reason. By smashing the Government of the wicked Saddam Hussein they turned Iran into the major power in the area, and that has destabilised Islam all the way from Turkey to Indonesia.

Tobias Ellwood: I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady. Can she complete this study on the uranium, or yellow cake, by sharing with the House how it ended up being mentioned in the state of the union address by President Bush?

Lynne Jones: It was mentioned in the state of the union address, but shortly afterwards a withdrawal was made. The UK Government cited CIA intelligence in support of their argument that uranium was sought, yet the CIA did not support that; it simply reported that another state had reported this fact. There is no evidence of any support from America or the CIA. Again, Butler neglects that fact, which was again argued closely in our dossier.
	All the evidence suggests that the United Kingdom Government were going out of their way to present evidence in a way that justified going to war. I could not put it better than the former member of the Defence Intelligence Staff, Brian Jones, who said:
	"A small coterie in and around No 10 knew that the Prime Minister needed an intelligence assessment that allowed him to paint a picture of an Iraq bristling with WMDs. That alone won him the public and parliamentary support he needed to go to war. A few top intelligence officials were the facilitators, providing the political spinners with enough of what they needed and the silence of an acquiescent Joint Intelligence Committee did the rest".
	We need to get to the bottom of how this House was misled in voting to go to war.

Malcolm Rifkind: I commend the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) on her moving comments and clear illustration of what happens when one goes to war, even if it is for the best of purposes, but then loses control of subsequent events. I shall return to those considerations in a few moments time.
	The Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), said that the Prime Minister had missed an opportunity, when he came to office, to try to distance himself from the Iraq war by initiating an inquiry. Although one would have liked to see the Prime Minister do that, it was never really on the cards. The Prime Minister is as involved as Tony Blair was. During that period, he was the second most powerful member of the Government, and if he had made it clear that he could not support the war, it would not have happened with British involvement. The Prime Minister of the day could not have accepted such a consideration. The Prime Minister has a serious problem, which explains the rather curious way in which he has tried to handle these legitimate demands for an inquiry.
	Reference has been made to the letter that the Prime Minister was sent by the Fabian Society. What he said in his reply, which has already been mentioned by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), is rather curious. The Prime Minister said that it was
	"vital that the Government does not divert attention from supporting Iraq's development as a secure and stable country."
	Is it seriously being suggested that we have to wait until Iraq is a secure and stable country before the Government will feel able to initiate the inquiry that they promised? We all know that even in the best scenario it will be years, if not decades, before Iraq is a secure and stable country. That cannot be the basis for denying the inquiry that is so clearly necessary.
	The case for an inquiry is unanswerable, both for reasons that are internal to Iraq and for reasons regarding the implications for the region as a whole. I refer again to the Prime Minister's comments, because they show the confusion and double standards at the heart of Government. The Government are confused. They know that their policy on Iraq is a shambles and that they cannot deal with the criticisms properly. When the leader of the Liberal Democrats asked the Prime Minister last week whether he had any regrets over what had happened in Iraq, almost the only point that the Prime Minister made in his reply was:
	"Millions of children are getting the benefit of education, vaccination and health care services as a result"—[ Official Report, 19 March 2008; Vol. 473, c. 916.]—
	as if we went to war to ensure vaccination for the children of Iraq, and as if that somehow justified all the other terrible things that have happened in Iraq!
	The Prime Minister knows perfectly well that that was a ridiculous justification for war, but no Ministers can now use the arguments that were made at the time. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Ministers know perfectly well that whatever the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs might have said, to argue for regime change in its own right is against international law, and could never possibly have the support of the UN. Ministers are scrabbling away trying to find convincing justifications, all to do with what a terrible man Saddam Hussein was, when they know perfectly well, as we do—we are not telling them anything that they do not already know—that that could not possibly have justified the war.
	I want, too, to refer to the external consequences of the war. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) who, in a marvellous and colourful speech, made some powerful and appropriate points. The single greatest beneficiary of this disastrous Iraq war has been Iran. Two of Iran's most powerful enemies were Saddam Hussein's regime on one side, and the Taliban on the other. Never in their wildest moments did the Iranians believe that both regimes would be removed by the United States—the great Satan—without Iran having to lift a finger to achieve its geopolitical and strategic objectives.
	One then has to add to the implications of Iran's emergence as a regional power the terrible Shi'a-Sunni sectarian conflict, which does not now exist merely in Iraq, but is part of a regional problem that is distorting the politics of the middle east. Although those tensions would have existed without the war in Iraq, that war provided the opportunity for a massive loss of life and ethnic cleansing on an enormous scale in Iraq that certainly would not have happened otherwise.
	Then let us look at the whole question of al-Qaeda. Even today, people such as Dick Cheney try to claim that there was some link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. We know perfectly well that al-Qaeda had no opportunity to develop its terrible deeds in Iraq until the power vacuum was created by the war initiated by the US and the UK. Perhaps most serious in terms of the next year or so is the fact that for the west and the international community, putting real effective pressure on Iran to desist from going down the nuclear weapons path is infinitely more difficult than it would otherwise have been. That is because of the massive loss of authority, credibility and power on the part of the US in particular, but also on the part of anyone who argues for tough measures with regard to these matters.
	I want to draw attention to a crucial question. Iraq is not only terrible in itself, but it is the single biggest example so far of the consequences of what is known as the Bush doctrine—that pre-emptive wars can be justified—combined with Tony Blair's Chicago speech, which tried to justify, under the name of liberal interventionism, the use of our armed forces to change regimes and, hopefully, in his view, to promote democracy around the world.
	That comes to the heart of the question of what is and what is not a just war. The concept of a just war goes back many centuries, as people have struggled to try to find some set of criteria for when war can be justified, particularly against those who have not attacked first.
	Traditionally, there have been five justifications for a just war. First, it must be started by a lawful authority: in the case of Iraq, that is a question of enormous controversy. Secondly, it has to be for a just cause, and we know that the reason why we went to war was not justified. Thirdly, it has to be a matter of good against evil—and I would be happy to concede that point, if it were the only relevant consideration. Fourthly, it has to be the last resort. Partly for the reasons given by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle, it clearly was not that in this case. Finally, there is the issue of proportionality.
	In the modern world, we have to extend those propositions in two important ways. First and most crucially, if we are going to try to begin to justify a war against a country that has not attacked us—if we are not acting in self-defence, and especially if we do not have the mandate of the Security Council of the United Nations—it is crucial that as part of the justification for war we consider all the likely, possible or credible consequences of that war. I do not mean only the combat, but what may happen after the combat is over. Unlike in the mediaeval world, in the modern world a war is not an end in itself. In times gone by, there were wars, somebody won, somebody lost, the war ended and things went back to normal. The whole problem with Iraq has been the power vacuum created by the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, and all the consequences that flowed from that.
	I was very disturbed by the interview that Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, gave to Andrew Marr a week or so ago. He was asked whether he had known what was going to happen in Iraq. He said:
	"I think that the trouble with Iraq was, we were kind of preparing for the wrong sort of aftermath. We made lots of preparations for humanitarian disaster, for the lack of water, you know for all that kind of thing."
	He spoke as if a lack of water was the only predictable consequence of sending an army into Iraq, removing the regime and creating a power vacuum.
	When asked why there were not sufficient troops in Iraq, Jonathan Powell said:
	"But no one was urging us to do that at the time. No one actually had that, that insight at the time. It would have been rather more useful if they'd told us then."
	Who is "they" supposed to be? This is the Prime Minister's chief of staff speaking—the man closest to him, who we know worked with him in the preparation of British policy. He says that they made no attempt to consider the possible consequences of removing a Sunni-dominated regime in a country with a Shi'a majority. They did not consider what would be the consequence of removing the existing power structure and, as was entirely predictable, the Shi'a majority then demanding power. They made no attempt to consider the implications for Iran if its traditional enemy were removed by force. They made no attempt to consider the implications for Shi'a-Sunni sectarian conflict. It was not that they got it wrong. They had not studied the situation and come to an unjustified conclusion. If Mr. Powell is to be believed—and we have no reason to doubt him—they were so busy wondering about the water supplies that they gave no thought to such issues.
	That suggests that we must learn from this experience that if one wishes to contemplate going to war in the modern world, and credibly to justify it as a just war, such consequences—which, in the case of Iraq, were not only predictable but predicted—must be taken into account and one must be prepared to live with the consequences. That is the first major change necessary to the just war theory to take account of modern circumstances.
	The second consideration goes to the heart of the argument made constantly by the Prime Minister and other apologists for the war. They ask whether we would have liked Saddam Hussein to have remained in power. Would it, they ask, be better if Saddam Hussein were still there, as if somehow that was an argument in itself. Well, it is not, because in the modern world armed forces can be used in a more restricted way. Using the military does not only mean going to war. They can be used for peacekeeping, for peace enforcement, for containment in various ways or to impose a no-fly zone. As my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle rightly pointed out, that was successfully being done in the 10 years before this terrible war began. Of course sanctions were not working perfectly, but Iraq's military power had been emasculated, by the first Gulf war, by the economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations, by the arms embargo that had been imposed, and by the no-fly zone that the United States and the United Kingdom were enforcing.
	Those sanctions had been so successful that those Arab and middle eastern countries that had supported the first Gulf war, including Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt—which were happy to be allies of the United States and the United Kingdom, and who sent their armies to help to liberate Kuwait, because they recognised that Saddam Hussein was a threat to regional security—were not happy to send their armies or provide diplomatic or political support for the Iraq war of five years ago. They knew, as we all know, that Saddam Hussein's regime had been emasculated. He was not a better man; he was still an evil man who would have like to do more evil, but he no longer had the capability to do so.
	The lessons must be learned for the future, if this is not to be an entirely terrible experience. First, in trying to decide whether war is justified, we must look not only at the combat aspect, but at the political, economic and social consequences of any war that we may initiate. In Iraq we have seen terrible loss of life of hundreds of thousands of people, millions of refugees, and internal anarchy. Ministers know how terrible the situation is in Iraq, and they wish that it had never happened. They wish that different decisions had been made five years ago. They know that, although I do not expect them to say so.
	The second lesson must be that the alternative to going to war is not, and never has been, doing nothing. Nor has it meant restricting oneself merely to economic, social or diplomatic pressure. There are other military means that can be used, including no-fly zones, embargoes, and various methods of peace enforcement. As we showed in Iraq until 2003, that can ensure regional peace and security. It was a messy solution and it might not have lasted for ever, but it did not even begin to be as terrible as what the people of Iraq have had to live through over the past five years.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: May I say straightaway what an irrepressible joy and pleasure it is to follow not just the person but the blazing erudition of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), which was surpassed only just, perhaps, by the blazing erudition of the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell). I can tell both of them that at the conclusion of this debate I shall hand them my papers for marking, and I hope to do rather better than I have done in the past. I shall also have the pleasure of joining them both in the Lobby.
	I believe not only that there must be an inquiry but that it is urgent and necessary, because this is a war without an apparent or defined end. There is no apparent or defined context of victory. What is victory in this war? We had a victory four years ago, and it is a gloomy symbiosis that the fourth anniversary of that victory marked the death of the 4,000th US serviceman in Iraq. He will not be the last; and nor will our next casualty be our last.
	What is the victory that we seek? Is it the stable, secure state that is spoken of by the Prime Minister? What is a stable and secure state? Who decides when Iraq has become a stable and secure state, capable of its own government? I do not wish to be facile and flippant, but I remember when debating devolution that there were those who said that Wales was not a sufficiently stable and secure state to govern itself. So who decides, who sets out the parameter of when we can safely leave? If the Americans cannot leave, nor can we.
	We hear what is said about the success, security and achievements of Basra, but it is necessary only to notice whence the trumpets of triumph and achievement come. They come from within the security of the British army base, miles from Basra. If a quarter of what we are told about Basra were true or reliable, British politicians would be making their speeches from within a liberated city and to a liberated people. They would not be arriving secretly at night at a base in order, as the world sees it, to posture in the safety of a British square. This is not a war that is anywhere near its termination, and that is why we cannot possibly wait until such time as that end occurs and by whose wish it occurs.
	If it is to be said that we cannot have an inquiry because it imperils the military effectiveness and strategy of what we are doing in Iraq, that is a military judgment, not a political judgment. If our senior commanders, past or present, had said publicly that it would be ill-advised and dangerous for us to hold an inquiry, or if Ministers had said that the commanders had advised them in that way, I would respect what they said. If Generals Rose or Jackson said, "We must not have an inquiry now because of the danger that it will pose to our strategy and to our troops", I would respect that and not vote for an inquiry. I shall not respect those who have interests in an inquiry, and those who are potential defendants in an inquiry, using the troops and strategy as an alibi in order to avoid one. That is precisely what we have seen.
	The second reason why an inquiry is urgent is that we cannot rely on the British media and press properly to interrogate the responsibility for and causes of this war. One had looked forward on the fifth anniversary of the war to seeing a resurgence of activity and interest in the media. Many of us were horrified by what we saw in the past few weeks: a media obsessed not with what was happening in Iraq but with itself. People in the media were asking themselves, "Why did I support the war?" or "Why did I oppose it?", or looking at other members of the media and asking, "Why did he oppose it? Why did she support the war? What was wrong with us?" That exercise had scant relevance and showed no interest in the truth in Iraq.
	Then came the worst part, the climax of that. I endorse what the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea said about interviews with Jonathan Powell. An even worse example was his interview with Jeremy Paxman on "Newsnight". I am perfectly happy to make the resources of my chambers available to Mr. Jeremy Paxman if he wishes to brush up his skills in cross-examination, but I can inform him that the youngest pupil in my chambers knows very well that prosecuting counsel do not ask questions that approximate to "Are you really sure you're not guilty?" When that is the question asked, one is a very long way away from the great pantheons of British advocacy, I can tell you that for nothing—particularly when it is followed by something like, "Do you have any regrets?" That, metaphorically, is very slow bowling outside the leg stump, particularly to somebody of the capacity of Mr. Jonathan Powell.
	To make it even worse, one third of that interview was given up not to Iraq but to plugging Mr. Jonathan Powell's book on Ireland. Baghdad is 2,805 miles from Belfast geographically, and a great deal further in culture and history and in terms of those who have died as a result of the military intervention. It is not in the same league.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I respectfully agree. The right hon. Gentleman has conveniently taken my next words from my mouth, because I was about to report to the House that that was indeed what Jonathan Powell said. The apologia that he gave for the war was that Saddam Hussein had gone. It is an apologia that we hear time and time again, and as a litany it begins to bear an uncomfortable relationship to the words of Napoleon the pig in Orwell's "Animal Farm", who at the end of the book informs the animals that their suffering and distress is in fact a paradise, because the farmer has been removed. Let us have no more of this, particularly those of us who spent many years campaigning against Saddam Hussein. We do not want to hear any more the idea that the distress to the Iraqi people and the 600,000 of them who have died is blood that was worth paying for an illegal occupation in 2003.
	It was possibly the diversion into Ireland that prevented any serious investigation in that interview, or at all, of the main issues upon which an inquiry must centre. I wish to bring to the House's attention just two, which are, for me, the most important two. I mention them also because they may be investigated without the slightest inconvenience to any diplomat in Iraq—which is now apparently the reason why we cannot have an inquiry—without the intervention of a single member of the armed forces; and without inconveniencing a single member of the security services, if that is something that exercises the House. They can be investigated only through the cross-examination and interrogation of those who were involved.
	The first is what was revealed in the Downing street memo of July 2002, reported by  The Sunday Times in an unusual contribution to the debate. It was recorded that at that meeting in Downing street in July 2002 Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of secret intelligence, or "C", as he was known, had reported from America to the War Cabinet, which included Jonathan Powell, that:
	"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
	In the same minute, it is recorded that the then Foreign Secretary, now the Lord Chancellor said that it was clear that
	"Bush had made up his mind to take military action...But the case was thin."
	The then Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, to whom I shall return in just a moment, is recorded as warning that justifying the invasion on legal grounds would be difficult.
	That secret memorandum, of limited circulation and ordered to be destroyed thereafter, will become, I predict, one of the seminal documents when the history of warfare comes to be discussed. Not one single word of that document reached this House; not one single word reached the British people. Indeed, this House was told precisely the opposite: until the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003, the case was made that there was still time to avert war and catastrophe. That was a lie, and a black deception to this House and to the British people.
	I do not entirely agree with the palliative statements in the excellent speech made by the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) in opening the debate. The real point of the debate, and of any inquiry that may be held, is not to learn lessons so that we do not make mistakes again. That is one reason, but I want an inquiry to be held into the Iraq war because I want those responsible to be brought to book and to justice. If necessary, they should be brought to international justice, but I want us to be the ones who bring them to it.

Paul Keetch: As the hon. Gentleman mentions, that is exactly what the Red Cross says. I think that the aftermath of the war needs to be considered. We could have predicted it. People on the Liberal Democrat Benches, notable exceptions on the Conservative Benches, and very many notable exceptions on the Labour Benches— [Interruption.]—and the nationalists warned the Government that the consequences of the action would be appalling, yet, I am afraid, one Conservative Front-Bencher who is sitting in the Chamber described me as an appeaser, and described my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber as Charlie Chamberlain. That was the kind of abuse that was being thrown at us when we warned of the consequences.
	A second aspect that must be considered, mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for Medway, is the legality of the war. I have never wanted to say that the war was illegal, because if I did, I would be suggesting that the British forces who went to Iraq were complicit in some kind of war crime, but certainly the legality of the war, and the justification by Lord Goldsmith, conveniently changed considerably in a 10-day period in the run-up to the war. There are many reasons to believe that under international law, the action, if not illegal, certainly pushed the bounds of legality in ways never experienced before. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said when expressing his view of what a just war is, Iraq could not be considered a just war. It is absolutely right that we examine whether the war was legal or not. After all, what other reason is there why Lord Boyce—then Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff—sought the Prime Minister's personal guarantee that the war was legal? He surely would only have done so if he had some doubts.
	The next thing that we must surely ask—it is a question that I asked consistently at the time—is whether we were equipped to fight the war, and whether we had the right equipment. Certainly the troops that I saw preparing to fight the war did not have the body armour, the boots or the equipment to make sure that they could fight the war. Sadly, that is a view shared in many coroners' inquests held since the war. We are not talking about a war that suddenly occurred; it was not like the Falklands, where we suddenly woke up one morning and said, "Oh my God, we've got to perform an amphibious action on the other side of the world." We are talking about a war for which we were preparing, month after month, yet we sent our troops away inadequately kitted out. Certainly some inquests have suggested that some of our servicemen died as a result of not being properly equipped. What more serious criterion could there be by which to judge the value of a conflict? We are talking about a Government who sent their troops off, knowing that they were going to fight, without giving them the equipment with which to fight that war.
	We have tonight heard references to weapons of mass destruction. There might have been such weapons years before, but certainly there were not weapons of mass destruction available to Saddam Hussein, ready to fire within 45 minutes, that could hit our bases in Cyprus; let us remember that the dossier suggested the contrary, as did the front page of the  Evening Standard. They suggested that there was somehow an immediate threat to British troops based in Cyprus, and a threat to the troops who were about to fight—the troops whom, let me remind hon. Members, we had not properly equipped.
	Reference has been made to Lord Franks and his inquiry after the Falklands. That was an inquiry on the workings of Government. I would certainly be happy if the inquiry that will eventually take place covered the workings of Opposition parties. I would certainly be prepared to stand by what we, as an Opposition party, did to oppose the war. Frankly, her Majesty's loyal Opposition failed to oppose it in the way that it should have done. It is a matter of record that before Christmas in 2002, the then leader of the Conservative party was calling for military action to overthrow Saddam. That was before the dossier and before any talk of weapons of mass destruction. The Tories, and unfortunately their leader at the time, were as much cheerleaders for the war as any Member on the Treasury Bench.

Paul Keetch: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea set out the reasons why a humanitarian war might be justified. Kosovo springs to mind: it was a conflict that my party and I supported, because there were clear reasons for doing so. We simply could not say that, however, about Iraq. If we did, we would say it about Zimbabwe and a host of other countries, in which we simply should not get involved.
	Finally, the one thing we know is that sooner or later, there will be another conflict. Another Secretary of State and another Prime Minister will come to the House to ask us to support military action. The first thing that some hon. Members will say— and the first thing that our constituents will say—is, "Is this another Iraq? Are we going to be fooled, like we were fooled then?" At some point in future, there will be a war that we will have to fight, and from which we will shy away, simply because of what happened in Iraq. 9/11 started the process. I was in the Commons with my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber on 9/11. We saw the skies being cleared, and we watched the aftermath on television. Once 9/11 had happened, George Bush had the authority in the US to do what he wanted to do, and settle his debts with Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, the previous Prime Minister went along with that. Unfortunately, the main Opposition party—or most of it—went along with it, and the result is the biggest disaster for British foreign policy that has occurred not only in my lifetime but in the lifetime of much more senior Members of Parliament. We should be ashamed, collectively, of what we did by sending our troops into Iraq. I hope that tonight we will start the process of atonement, and the only way in which we can begin to do so is to have a full, proper inquiry into the events leading up to war.

Frank Cook: I intended my remarks to be short, and I shall still try to keep them brief.
	I should like to take the Chamber back to the original debate. Members who were there will recall that it was a lengthy day. There was a main Question, and there was an amendment. The text of the amendment was originally proposed by Lord Smith, who was then the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury. A number of Labour Members got together to consider the text, and it was thought by some—principally me—that it was slightly inappropriate, and needed to be changed. Collectively, those Members decided to accept my suggestion, and that has a bearing on what I will come on to say. The text of the amendment was, in a way, the result of consideration by myself.
	I sat all day through that debate, and I left the Chamber only twice—once to visit the rest room and get a cup of tea, and the other time, to respond to a summons from the then Prime Minister to his chambers behind the Chair. He called me singly. I had to wait to go in alone, whereas other Members went in in groups. A group went ahead of me, and a group followed me after I had finished. I was with the Prime Minister for about 25 minutes, and he was clearly in some distress. He begged me to support him on the amendment, but I pointed out that I was voting for the amendment. He said, "No, no, no—I need you to vote against it." I said, "You don't really need my vote. The Conservatives are going to support you on the amendment anyway, so you're going to romp it." He said, "I want to win it with Labour votes." I said, "I'm sorry, Tony, you can't have mine." "Why not?" he said. I said, "For a start, I have sat in the Chamber for over four hours today, and I was informed by the Chair as I came out to see you that I didn't have a chance of being called to speak, because I spoke for four minutes on the debate that was called during the recall of Parliament last year, for which I had to travel across the Atlantic, before going back again." Four minutes in one year denied me any opportunity to register my views at that time.
	I said, "Apart from that, I am partly responsible for the words on the Order Paper. I can hardly vote against my own text. The Prime Minister pleaded, pleaded and pleaded, but I said, "I just can't do it. I can't even apologise for it, because that's it." The amendment, as the House will recall, said that Hans Blix and team be given time to finish the job with which they had been tasked. Blair said, "I really need your support." He was distressed—he was chalk white, and was visibly shaking—so I said, "Tony, the best thing I can do for you is, once the amendment is defeated, although I would like to think that it won't be, on the basis of clause stand part, I will vote for the main Question." That is what I did, and I have to tell the House what I have told one or two people privately: from that day to this, I have regretted it to the bottom of my heart, and I am deeply ashamed that I allowed myself to do it.
	As I went through the Lobby in the Division on the main Question, I got a slap on the back. Some Members will remember that I had trouble with my shoulders. Left wing, right wing—they were both troublesome at different times. I got a slap on my bad wing—my left wing; Blair was always keen to hurt the left wing. When I turned round, ready to use my right wing to reply to this pain, Blair was standing against the bookcase, still white, still quivering. All he said was, "Thanks, Frank."
	In a way, I am relieved that I have had the opportunity to confess openly to that this evening, but let me come to the question of an inquiry. I do not think that anyone is arguing about the need for one, and I do not think that anyone will argue about its breadth or the depth to which we should pursue it. There is great agreement on that, because it needs to start as early as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) said, and it needs to cover all the things that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) covered, and lots more besides.
	But the question is when, and I am still not convinced that now is the time. Let me explain why. I was brought up as a child when there were big posters on the wall which read, "Careless talk costs lives". We have been talking about previous inquiries, such as the Dardanelles in 1917—that was when nations were fighting nations—and Norway, when it was no more than a debate. We are not fighting nations now and we are not seeking a debate.
	We are dealing with al-Qaeda, and with al-Qaeda we must deal with al-Jazeera. We have all experienced their great technique in handling modern communications. We have seen how skilfully they can misrepresent, and even now I can guarantee that they will be misrepresenting the kind of debate that this has become and the kind of self-justifying statements that have been bellowed across the Chamber.
	I sympathise with the sergeant in the paras. Of course I do—my boy is in the Army. We care about every one of them, but we must make sure that we do not give hostages to fortune, and that we do not give encouragement to the terrorists that we are trying to combat. Let us not forget that not only is it not nation against nation, but we have the enemy in our midst. There was not only 9/11; there was 7/7 in a London bus and in a tube station, and we are creating enemies within our own communities by talking in this way.
	Whatever inquiry takes place must be conducted on the right basis and must not be conducted in haste. I understand that we have the problems that the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) has suddenly discovered in the past 15 months, in going ahead with an inquiry, and I commend him for recognising those problems. "It is not a trial," he said, "or an impeachment." On that basis, if he were running the inquiry, I could go along with it, but do you think that the  Daily Mail would allow it to remain not a trial and not an impeachment? My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway has already said that we cannot rely on the media. Well, we can, you know. They will make the worst of it that they possibly can, for their own political ends.

Crispin Blunt: I shall make a little progress, if the hon. Gentleman will allow me.
	From a sedentary position, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) said, in reference to Iraq and Afghanistan, that the situation was different altogether. I could not disagree more strongly. I shall come to the direct parallels that exist—particularly in respect of the overlap between our policies towards the police and the army in Iraq. We have totally failed to provide proper training for the police in Iraq; I shall come to that, and to what is happening in Afghanistan now, later in my remarks.
	The saddest speech that we have witnessed in this debate was the Foreign Secretary's. To say that the events today in Basra are an example of why we should not be having an inquiry now is to say the opposite of the truth. In Basra at the moment, what the Iraqi army is having to mete out to the militias—and, to a degree, to the Basra police, who are completely infiltrated by the militias—is a precise example of what I am talking about, because it all flows from British policy and action, in Basra in particular, in the past five years.
	The most amusing part of the Foreign Secretary's response came when my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) made clear that the Mesopotamia inquiry entirely destroyed his arguments about the Dardanelles inquiry; the Foreign Secretary's defence was that the shadow Foreign Secretary had not mentioned the Dardanelles in his argument in chief. The Foreign Secretary went on to say that the wisdom of the Foreign Office would always be taken into account. In the light of what happened in 2003, that statement is pretty amazing: the legal adviser to the Foreign Office resigned; a previous Foreign Secretary resigned from the Government; my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), the Foreign Secretary previous to Robin Cook, was against the war; and scores of retired ambassadors with experience in the region made public their opposition to the war.

David Lidington: The hon. Gentleman has been constant on this issue; I doubt whether many of his constituents would believe that he had been consistent in many others.
	We have heard agreement in the debate, the common ground being that we should have an inquiry. The argument has been over its timing and, to some extent, its scope. The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) concentrated on its scope. I want to reassure him that, as the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) said in his speech, the motion was deliberately chosen. It follows the terms of a Scottish Nationalist and Plaid Cymru motion that was debated in the House in 2006. That wording was the outcome of cross-party discussions, which included Labour Members.
	Our purpose in choosing that motion rather than one that could easily have been phrased to score party political points was to try to unite as many Members as possible throughout the House in support of a measure that we believe it is in our national interest to support. Its scope is wide, rather than as narrow as the hon. Member for Ilford, South said. I draw his attention to the words in the motion, particularly those that state that an inquiry would have power
	"to review the way in which the responsibilities of Government were discharged in relation to Iraq, and all matters relevant thereto".
	It is open under our proposal for a committee of inquiry to search as far back in history as the hon. Gentleman proposed, or even further, if Privy Counsellors on that committee so decided.
	The thrust of the debate has been about the timing of a proposed inquiry. The Foreign Secretary, to his credit, laid at least one argument to rest when he said that the morale of the armed forces was not an issue, and would not be harmed if an inquiry were to take place now. The argument was rather that holding an inquiry now would interfere with what he described as important operations under way in Iraq. In effect, he was saying that the effectiveness of the military could be harmed if we were to press ahead with the inquiry now rather than delaying it.
	The Foreign Secretary told us about significant actions taking place in Basra today, but those actions do not involve British troops, except possibly in a supporting or specialist role. In a written answer given to my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), the Secretary of State for Defence said:
	"UK Forces have not received any requests from the Iraqi authorities to re-intervene in Muthanna, Dhi Qar or Basra since the handover of security responsibility to the Iraqis in these provinces."
	He went on to say that
	"we have provided specialist support to operations led by the Iraqi security forces on a number of occasions."—[ Official Report, 10 March 2008; Vol. 473, c. 14W.]
	Minister after Minister, from the Ministry of Defence and from the Foreign Office, has hailed the changes that have taken place in the last six to nine months as evidence that responsibility for security and the lead role in Iraq is being progressively handed over to the Iraqis, with British forces taking a much more limited role. However, at the same time, Ministers appear to argue that that role—which includes training, securing supply routes and policing the Iran-Iraq border, as the Foreign Secretary described—is still such that an inquiry should not take place until those duties have been completed, and, logically, until the last serviceman or woman has been withdrawn from Iraq.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House notes the Resolutions of this House of 31st October 2006 and 11th June 2007 on an Iraq inquiry; recognises that this House has already twice voted against holding an inquiry at these times; further recognises that a time will come when an inquiry is appropriate; but declines to make a proposal for a further inquiry at this time, whilst important operations are underway in Iraq to support the people and government of Iraq.'.

Stephen Hammond: I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering effectively made that same point, and in response I said that in these debates, we have recognised hotspots and honeypots. Those are exactly the places where people who are not resident in the area may well use buses.
	The Minister talked about the percentage of extra money that was being funded by the Government, but as several hon. Members said in interventions, that does not recognise the extra cost of concessionary fares or the formula estimating the number of journeys. Also, she said that current usage would be our indicator for future usage, but because of a number of issues such as the hotspot issue, that is unlikely to be a good indicator.
	A number of councils across the country have talked about the budget deficits that they will experience in 2008-09 as a result of the problems. The Minister mentioned extra moneys, but let me talk about the local councils that have provided me with data relating to budget deficits that will be created. The Basildon authority has given a £500,000 figure. Blackpool has talked about £200,000. Brighton and Hove is talking about a sum of about £1.7 million. The hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) has told us that Carlisle expects a budget deficit of £270,000. The local authority of my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) has indicated that it is likely to have a budget deficit of at least £500,000. Hastings has given a £200,000 figure. I could go on, mentioning places across the country.
	When the Bill introducing the scheme passed through Parliament last year, time and again my colleagues and I expressed serious concerns about the funding system and whether the Government would put enough money into the system to fund what they were proposing. At the time, I tabled an amendment calling for a review of the funding mechanism, which would allow the Government to establish the costs borne by operators and authorities. Such a review would allow the Government to see whether the moneys that they were putting into the scheme were adequate for the new extension; to ensure that the distribution of those moneys went to the right place; to achieve efficiency and savings; and to re-examine whether the "no better off, no worse off" principle was being followed. The short answer is that the amendment was defeated by the Government, and no one knows whether the funding provided by the Government for concessionary travel is sufficient. Had the amendment been accepted, we would not be seeing some of the chaos that we see today, and a proper review could be performed with the aim of evening out those unforeseen inconsistencies.
	The Government have talked about providing £212 million extra this year; £217 million in 2009-10; and £223 million the following year. That might be enough, but it may not be. The Minister said that it was extra money. It is not: it is the money that was going to be necessary on top of what was already available for concessionary funding to implement the Government's new scheme. Last year, when the Bill was in Committee, the then Minister was talking not about £212 million, but about £250 million. As for the £1 billion that the Minister has discussed again tonight, £400,000 of that is somewhere in the rates support system, and it is extremely difficult to trace whether the Government have really provided that sum, and whether it is reaching the places it should reach.
	The moneys that the Government are providing may be enough, but from the experience of local authorities, that certainly does not appear to be the case. For the past couple of years, bus operator inflation, as recognised by all transport bodies, has been closer to 9 per cent. than to the consumer prices index of 3 per cent. The Government have proposed increases for the next two years of 2.3 and 2.7 per cent. Even if they think that the £212 million this year is enough, the position is not encouraging for the next two years. They must recognise that, up and down the country, local authorities face huge gaps in their funding. There may well be some generous funding, as the Minister said, but if it does not meet costs, there will be problems for local authorities.
	Barnsley metropolitan borough council, for example, said:
	"I do feel our authority is receiving inadequate compensation".
	Basildon council said, "We are seriously underfunded". Bournemouth council said that
	"this government grabs the headlines giving out concessionary fares",
	while
	"leaving councils to pick up the mess and move on".
	Carlisle council said:
	"This situation is not financially sustainable."
	I could go on, right the way through the alphabet, but I will not do so, because I know that colleagues want to make a contribution to our debate. However, the Government are clearly not listening to local authorities. When the consultation on the distribution method for the special grant was analysed, the Department for Transport reported that
	"the main concern raised by many was that the additional money allocated by Government would not be sufficient to pay for the extra cost of the new all-England concession."
	Since then, countless local authorities have made representations to the Government and to many others, but to little avail. Council planners' confusion has been exacerbated by poor, overdue Government guidance. Indicative of that is the fact that the DFT required councils to publish draft scheme details and reimbursement guidance before 1 December last year, but it published its guidelines for doing so only in January 2008. The expected delays in the deployment of smart card technology are further evidence that while the Government expect councils to cope with short lead times, they cannot do so themselves.
	At Christmas, parents spend their hard-earned cash on presents for their children, and it is Father Christmas who tends to get all the credit. The Minister says that the Government should have all the credit for giving pensioners and disabled people free bus travel, but they ignore the fact that local authorities throughout the country will have to pay for it. The Government are trying to be Father Christmas, and the local authorities will be the out-of-pocket parents.
	Concessionary bus travel is a positive thing and due credit should be given to the Government for introducing it. However, they cannot grab all the congratulatory headlines, for as we shall see in the debate, it is clear that they have not met their commitment to fully fund the extension to a national concessionary travel scheme, and it is still not clear whether they have provided sufficient funding for the local concessionary travel scheme. It is clear that the local authorities and the bus operators are suffering financial shortages as a result of the extension that will come into operation. The concern must be that the travelling public and exactly those groups that the Bill is designed to help will be hardest hit by the funding.
	Although we will not vote against the motion tonight, I hope that the Government will recognise that they have not met their commitment to fully fund the scheme. I hope that they will accept that an immediate review of the funding is needed and will reach an agreement to do so with local authorities and operators. I urge the Government to confirm that they will do that, for if they do not, there can be no certainty that the scheme will be a success, or that throughout the country in three years the scheme will be able to help many of the routes or the people whom it was designed to help.

Adrian Sanders: Are there any common factors among the authorities that got told my hon. Friend that they were underfunded? From what the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) said, it seems that a disproportionate number of seaside resorts are involved. Areas that attract tourists could end up carrying the biggest proportion of the underfunding.

Eric Martlew: No, I am not suggesting that at all. I am suggesting that local authorities should keep their promises. I forgot to say that the other person who voted against the scheme was the Liberal Democrats' prospective candidate for Carlisle. We should have known that they would vote against it.
	To be serious and to return to the major issue, if we are to have a truly nationwide scheme that does not have winners and losers, we need to move quickly to a countywide basis. We have heard the arguments from Derbyshire and various other authorities; it could have been Somerset where it was argued that one of the authorities was no longer part of the loop. The scheme is not working, and we really need a system funded by the counties. If that happens—we will have to let councils have time to adjust—the Government will no longer have to put in any money at all, because the money is there, but in some cases has not gone to the right authorities.  [ Interruption. ] That is true, and I have explained why. In the case of Carlisle, the money has gone to the local authority; it has just not been spending it.

Eric Martlew: My view is that the hon. Gentleman should perhaps have listened more carefully. The system has to be put on a countywide basis. It is no good adjusting the system in three years. We have to move to a totally different system. If we do that, we will have a better system, as well as larger authorities to negotiate with the likes of Stagecoach, First Group or National Express. The idea of my local authority arguing the case against Stagecoach frightens me, because to be honest I do not think that it is up to the job. We need large authorities to do that.
	Let us return to the main point. The scheme is a great success. The Labour Government have promised to do this, and they are doing it. People will get the benefit in my constituency, and up and down the land, on 1 April this year. If it had been left up to the Opposition parties they would have talked about it forever, but they would never have found the money.

Mark Harper: Given the limited time available I shall focus on one issue and pick up the point I raised in my intervention on the Minister.
	As one steps through the report, it is very clear that it is not a national scheme at all, but an England scheme. When the Prime Minister, then the Chancellor, promised the scheme, it was clearly spun and reported as a national scheme, so many of my constituents quite rightly thought that that meant they could travel anywhere in the UK. As has already been said by hon. Members with constituencies in Wales or near the Scottish borders, this has been a severe let-down. The impression was certainly given that the scheme would be UK-wide, but that has clearly not been delivered. All I ask for is a little honesty. Ministers should not use the word "national"; they should say only "England" to make it clear that the scheme allows people not to cross national borders but only local authority ones. Ministers should be honest about what exactly they are promising.
	I said in my intervention that the scheme does not mean much to many of my constituents, and that is exactly right. If someone needs to travel across the border into Wales, the scheme will not help. A constituent who lives in Lydney can get the bus from there to Chepstow, but continuing will mean changing in Chepstow and paying for the rest of the journey. For many of my constituents, that will be the more significant part of the journey. Because of the geography, someone starting a journey from the southern end of my constituency and wanting to go back into England will have to pass through Wales. If that means changing buses, even though the start and end points of the trip are both in England, it will not be possible to claim for the cost of the whole journey. That is a ridiculous situation.
	Someone starting in Lydney who has to catch a bus to Chepstow and then change, perhaps to go to Cribbs Causeway, which is also in England, will have to fund the bulk of the trip themselves. My constituents think that that is simply bizarre. It is all very well saying that the local authority has the option to fund that part of journey: of course it does, but it will cost money, and it means that the Government have made a promise but not funded it. Something else will have to give—either council tax will have to rise or other services will not be funded. The Minister should take that into account and work on it with her colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government.
	Let me take hon. Members through some of the questions that I have asked on this issue. When I challenged the then Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain), by asking him whether he would work with his colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government
	"to take up that framework legislation to ensure that we can have seamless journeys across the English-Welsh border",
	he replied:
	"Indeed. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that Welsh Assembly Government Ministers will do that."—[ Official Report, 17 January 2001; Vol. 455, c. 772.]
	When I asked the then Transport Minister, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron), the same sort of question, she pointed out in a written parliamentary answer that the Concessionary Bus Travel Bill had a framework for working closely with the devolved Administrations and that all had "indicated support". She said—this was in May last year—that the Government and the devolved Administrations would have to work closely together. We do not seem to have made a great deal of progress since then.
	When I questioned the present Minister in oral questions in December, she said that she wanted
	"to see the scheme operating properly across the borders".—[ Official Report, 4 December 2007; Vol. 468, c. 670.]
	When I challenged the Minister responsible for Transport in the Welsh Assembly Government on that matter, however, he said that he wanted to see the scheme "settle down". That was not the Minister's position at the time, but I notice that the two have now got their act together and co-ordinated their responses, as the Minister is now saying that she wants the scheme to settle down.
	I do not see why my constituents should have to cope with an unholy mess on 1 April as they discover that they cannot use the scheme for many of the journeys that they need to take—going to hospitals, doctors' surgeries, dentists and so forth. Why should they be denied that? Why should they have to wait for the scheme to "settle down" while the Westminster Government and the Welsh Assembly Government try to get their act together to ensure that the scheme will work across borders?

Derek Twigg: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho) on securing the time for this important debate and wish to place on record my appreciation for the support she gives to service personnel, veterans and the interest that she takes generally in these issues. I know that she has a good relationship with her local veterans' organisations. I know that that is part of her general approach to supporting service personal.
	The pensions and compensation awarded to sailors, soldiers and airmen and women who are injured in the service of their country, and to the families of those who sadly lose their lives, are an important topic. I am sure that the House will pay tribute to the sterling work of the armed forces and their courage, sacrifice and professionalism. Families, of course, play a vital role in supporting them, particularly through some difficult times.
	The Government are fully committed to meeting their duty of care to serving personnel, veterans and families. That is recognised by many, including the Royal British Legion, which has acknowledged the number of improvements that we have made over recent years. We have, for example, seen a number of improvements in the programmes governing service pay, accommodation, health and welfare provisions, force protection and personal equipment. We recognise, however, that there is still scope for improvement and we continue to work on that, which is why we have announced a cross-Government personnel Command Paper, which is due to report this spring.
	On 8 November 2007, the Government announced work to develop the first ever cross-Government strategy for supporting our service personnel, their families and veterans. The Command Paper will outline steps taken so far and future initiatives to enhance the Government's support. Work on the paper is being led by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces and will fully involve the service chiefs. We will also involve service and ex-service organisations. The intention is to ensure we have in place a framework of policies and practical services to meet the needs of our service personnel, veterans and their families.
	I accept that things could be improved and that they have gone wrong in the past. We are working continually to improve the overall support that we give our service personnel, their families and veterans, because providing the correct level of support to bereaved families is a crucial part of supporting our armed forces. I was sorry to hear the issues raised by my hon. Friend this evening, and I assure her that I will get back to her on them and will find out what happened in this case.
	The Ministry of Defence assists in a number of ways, including through the work of trained in-service visiting officers who are appointed to act as a liaison between the bereaved family and the services for as long as the family require it. Again, I am disappointed to hear that Mrs. Thompson has not heard anything since 2005.
	Of course, the MOD has made a number of improvements to the support that it gives to bereaved families. The number of family members who receive travel and accommodation expenses to attend repatriation ceremonies has been increased from five to seven. Two family members are able to reclaim the costs of their attendance at pre-inquest hearings and funding is already provided for two family members who wish to attend the full inquest. A tax-free funeral grant is offered to families. If the family wishes to hold a service funeral, arrangements and funding are provided by the MOD. A further tax-free grant of £500 will be introduced for the next of kin to meet any personal costs that they might occur as a result of their bereavement.
	My hon. Friend raised specifically the case of Mrs. Tina Thompson, to whom I offer my condolences, and I am sure that the rest of the House will join me in that. I cannot imagine what a traumatic and difficult time it has been for Mrs. Thompson since the loss of her husband due to his death in a motor accident in Cyprus in 2005. I pay tribute to him for his service in a number of military theatres and operations with the armed forces.
	As my hon. Friend said, Mrs. Thompson has sought permission to appeal her case to the Court of Appeal. I ask my hon. Friend to understand that my remarks will therefore focus on the general provisions of the armed forces compensation scheme and pensions scheme, rather than on the particulars of Mrs. Thompson's case. It is important to put what the schemes provide on the record.
	I want to draw the attention of the House to the decision of the independent pensions appeal commissioner, and his findings that
	"service was not the predominant cause of"
	Sergeant Thompson's death, that
	"at the time of his death, he was not on duty"
	and that
	"at that time, he was not responding to an emergency."

Derek Twigg: I can assure my hon. Friend that we are not hiding behind a point of law. I have drawn the House's attention to the decision of the independent pensions appeal commissioner and his findings on this case. I cannot go into the details of the case because there is an appeal pending, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will understand that.
	The award under the armed forces compensation scheme, which came into effect in April 2005, compensates for pain and suffering and is made under a tariff-based system, which is informed by existing established models such as the Judicial Studies Board's guidelines for the assessment of general damages in personal injury cases and the criminal injuries compensation scheme. The most seriously injured are also awarded a guaranteed income payment. This is a tax free, index-linked payment made every month from discharge. Between the lump sum and the GIP, individuals can receive hundreds of thousands of pounds over a lifetime. Unlike other compensation schemes, the armed forces compensation scheme has no monetary cap.
	We have monitored the scheme closely in the light of experience and the scheme is due for a full review in 2010. At the end of last year, we recognised that the scheme was not fully meeting its policy intent of focusing resources on the most seriously injured. We have made changes to the rules relating to those who have suffered multiple injuries from a single incident to reflect better the serious and complex nature of some of the injuries that servicemen and women were receiving on operations. Because of improvements in body armour and medical care, people are surviving injuries that they might not have survived just a few years ago.
	The scheme also provides for the families of those who lose their lives due to service. In such cases, a survivor's guaranteed income payment is made to the husband, wife, or civil partner for the rest of their lives—regardless of their own financial position or any future changes. This payment is based on 60 per cent. of the guaranteed income payment that the spouse would have been eligible to receive. There is also a child's payment awarded to the deceased's children and paid until the child is aged 18, or 23 if they remain in full-time education. This is set at 25 per cent. of the guaranteed income payment if there is one child, or, if there are more, the remaining 40 per cent. of the GIP is split between them. There is also a lump sum bereavement grant of up to £20,000 paid to the surviving spouse.
	I am sure that the House will agree that while no amount of money can adequately compensate a family for the premature death of a husband or wife, a father or mother, the armed forces compensation scheme provides an appropriate level of no-fault compensation both for those injured and for the families of those killed as a result of their service in the armed forces.
	Of course, the armed forces compensation scheme is not the only scheme to provide financial support for the family of deceased servicemen and women. Provision is also made under the armed forces pension schemes, and this is particularly relevant for those whose family members die while serving in the armed forces but not actually due to service.
	Under the rules of the armed forces pension scheme 1975, for those cases where death occurs while in service but not due to service, a pension is paid to the surviving spouse or civil partner. Initially this will be a short-term family pension equal to the daily rate of pensionable pay. This is paid for the first 91 days, or for twice that if there are children. Thereafter the surviving partner receives a pension set at 50 per cent. of the level of pension that would have been payable to the serviceman or woman had they survived, but instead left service on the date they died. Any children receive a share of the remaining 50 per cent. of the pension, up to a maximum of 25 per cent. for a single child. The surviving spouse will also have received a lump sum payment equal to either three times the member's annual pension or twice the full invaliding rate of pension applicable to the rank of the individual involved, whichever is greater.
	In 2005, the 1975 pensions scheme was closed to new entrants, and a new, more modern scheme introduced. All existing members of the 1975 scheme were given the opportunity to transfer to the armed forces pension scheme 2005, which remains the extant scheme. This provides for a tax-free lump sum payment of four times pensionable pay—an increase in what would have been payable under the 1975 scheme. It also provides for a pension based on the pension that the individual would have received had they been medically discharged, enhanced by half the remaining time the individual would have been expected to serve up to the typical pension age of 55. Dependants can also receive a pension.
	It is important to understand that these substantial death-in-service benefits are available to surviving spouses, irrespective of the circumstances in which the serviceman or woman died. This distinguishes them from the additional payments available under the armed forces compensation scheme, which are only payable if a death is due to service, but ensures that no family is left without a means of support.
	To give an illustration, and depending on earnings and age, for a sergeant that could equal a tax-free lump sum payment of more than £100,000, and a taxable pension in the region of £6,000 a year. In addition, the monthly payment to any children would further increase the size of the total award. To reiterate, these awards are payable to the family of any individual who dies in service, regardless of whether they are eligible for additional awards under the armed forces compensation scheme.
	No amount of money can adequately compensate for the loss of a loved one. Additional awards are made to those families whose loved ones die while they are on duty, or for whom their service is the predominant cause of death. That is only appropriate, but the Ministry of Defence can and does ensure that any family left behind have some time and space to adjust to their loss without financial worries. It also provides ongoing support to any spouse or children left behind.
	We want members of the armed forces and their families to get the fair deal that they deserve, and we will provide support in all circumstances, especially when the worst possibilities come to pass. I am sure that the House will agree that a lot has been done to support armed forces personnel and their families.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge has raised some important points about what is a very difficult case, with which she has been closely involved. While the appeal that is taking place means that I cannot comment on the details, I repeat that I am concerned to hear that Mrs. Thompson does not believe that she had the support that she should have had from the time of her bereavement. My hon. Friend said that Mrs. Thompson was last contacted by a welfare officer in 2005, and that there are problems to do with the coroner's inquiries and personal effects. I repeat my earlier promise that I will get back to her as soon as possible with the information that she needs for her constituent.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes past Twelve o'clock.